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I 



OUR NATIOK 



AN ADDRESS 

BEFOKE THE / vT 

ARCHZIAN UNION OF BELOIT COLLEGE. 

Delivered. FeT^riaary 28, 1862. 
BY 

PROF, J; EMERSOK 



BELOIT, WIS.: 

.TOI'RN'.Vr, AM) COUIUKK I'HINT. 

1S02. 



COERESPONDENCE. 



Beloit Collkge, March 3d, 1SG2. 
Pkof. J. Emerson: — 
Dear Sir: — It is with gratification that we transmit to you a copy 
of a Resolution of the Archaean Union, adopted at a special meeting held 
this evening, expressing their estimation of your Address, delivered on the 
evening of the 28th of February, and request a copy of it for publication ; 
hoping it will meet your pleasure to comply with the request. 

^^ Resolved, That we regard the Address delivered by Professor Emerson 
before this Society, on Friday evening, February 2Sth, as an impartial 
exposition of our external and ititcrnal, political aud social rchitiaiis ; an 
Address not only National, but Universal ; and cansidering it the result of 
an unbounded love and reverence for "Our Nation," we feel greatly 
indebted to him for the honor of its delivery before the Society. Believing 
that its publication would gratify both those who heard it and many who 
did not, we respectfully request a copy of it for this purpose." 

Yours, with much respect, 

Hexry S. OsnonxE, 
Thomas S. McClellaxd, 
Sam'l D. II.vsTixas, Ju., 

Comiiiitlce. 



Beloit College, March 4th, 18(32. 
Gextlemex : — 

Your polite Qote, requesting, in behalf of the Arch;uan Union, a copy 
of the lecture of Friday evening, is before me. 

The aim of the Address was to lay before the members of the Society 
and of the communit}', certain principles which seemed to me important 
at the present crisis, when our people are rapidly coming to conclusions 
which will be of lasting influence upon the future of our country and of 
the world. I am gratified that those principles have been Aivorably re- 
ceived by the young men to whom thoy were presented, and if, in tko 
judgment of the Society, the publication of the Address wonld further 
promote thena, it is at their service. 

Very truly your.?, 

J. Emeksox, 

J/c6's;*». OnhornCf McClelland and Jfastlni/n, 

Committee Arc/tcvan Union, 



OUR NATION. 



Our Nation ! And what is a nation ? ^^'e think of a nation as 
composed of people united under one government ; and yet we do not 
call the English, the Irish, the Hottentots, and the Hindoos, one 
nation, though they are under one government ; and we do call the 
Germans one, though under many governments. The ancient Greeks 
were one nation in many states ; and the old Pkoman Empire com- 
prised many nations under one conjniand, "What, then, is the unity of 
a nation ? Locality and language and kindred blood have much to do 
with it. Yet the master and the .slave, on one plantHtion, are not of 
one nation. The Jews, scattered through all lands and speaking all 
languages, are yet one nation. In our own land, English and Irish, 
who never could coalesce across the sea, and Germans and Italians^ 
rally side by side with native Americans under the Stars and Stripes, 
and all look up to that glorious banner as their own — their own as 
no other banner ever had been or could be; while native Americans, 
even those who a little while ago were joining in the cry of "America 
for the Americans," have shown, by their treason, that they never 
had the moral right to call that banner theirs. 

" America for the Americans !" Most certainly ! The word 
comes back to us purified in this burning atmosphere of war. "Amer- 
ica for the Americans I" So mote it be! So shall it be ! But who 
is the American ? Shall we recognize him by his Anglo-Saxon blood 
and pedigree ? Or is that man an American, in whose heart is the love 
of those principles of liberty and law, which are the soul of the Ameri- 
can life ? Is not every man, of whatsoever race or language, who 
accepts in his heart our Declaration of Independence, our country- 
man and our brother ? and is not whosoever rejects it an alien or a 
traitor ? So I think we must define the term nation, as aiJiilied ta 
us. The unity of our nation is a unity of sympathy . 

There are those who seem to think that a nation is a kind of part- 
nership, entered into by mutual consent, and dissolvable at tlie plea- 
sure of any party, so that any body of men, or any spoiled child, 
might vote itself a nation. Is it so? Is a nationalify a thing of 
human creation, or is it a work of God ? 

Did not He, that made the worlds, " make of one blooil all nations 



() OT:R NATION. 

of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and determine the 
times before appointed, and the hounds of their habitation; that they 
might seek after the Lord, if haply they might find him, though he 
be not far from every one of u.s ?" 

There you have the key of history. The nations, like the fimilies 
of men, are centers of sympathy, by which God is teaching our 
Ishmaelitish nature to live in kindness and in law, and to rise to 
enough of purity of heart, and symmetry and development of mind, 
to seek for and to recognize and to unite itself to that Fatherly au- 
thority, — that Brotherly love and Spiritual communion of the one 
God, which is always " not far from every one of us," and which is 
ever yearning to receive us into the fellowship of that kingdom of 
God, which itself shall be the realization of the ideal of a nation. 

A nation, then, is not the product of a whim or of a day ; uor is it 
to be blotted out by a battle, or even by jeavs of oppression. This is 
true even of those comparatively minor nations, which differ from 
those about them, only as dialects of the same language differ. The 
Poles, the 3Iagyars, the Irish, tlie Italians, hold their own national 
sympathies unconcjucrable, even in bondage. 

But, if I mistake not, ours is a nation in a different sense from that 
in which the Poles or the French are nations. For all shall find 
these particular nationalities grouping in larger aggregates or systems 
of nations, like that Christendom which hurled itself upon the 3Ios- 
lem in the Crusades. A true chart of the history of the world should 
present these grand national wholes. Certain bounds of national 
habitation have remained or re-established themselves with wonderful 
persistence. No changes of dynasty, or even of faith, could efface 
them. The Tigris, the Hellespont, and the Adriatic, have formed 
dividing lines, beyond which it seemed that nations could not mingle. 

But, looking iipon the work of the World-builder, we should see 
Him not only letting in the seas to separate Europe from Africa and 
from Asia, but also spreading out a vast ocean between all that conti- 
nent and another, which for thousands of years was to be hidden 
from the Old World. Every night, while those old nations were 
sleeping, the sun visited it, and found it still in native wiidness, wait- 
ing *' the time before appointed," when its chosen j)eople should come 
and erect there a nation worth the waiting. 

So patiently worketli He, at whose least word a universe would 
spring into instant being, or would pass away and be no more. He 
is reducing a rebellion. He is restoring the kingdom of God, in a 
world disorganized by treason. His heart is in the work. There is 
no treason in Him, nor loitering, nor indecision. He presses on the 
war of restoration with all His skill, and all His energy, and all His 
resources. And yet four thousand ycai's of anarchy and wretchedness 
passed away before He sent His Son to speak, so that men could un- 
derstand it, that word of deliverance, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself," which is the only foundation of true society among men. 
And even He came not with hosts of victor angels to strike off every 
bond, and to cast men with ihv'w alienated hearts inlo a chaotic Jib- 



OUR NATION. 



crly, equality and malignily. So perhaps 3Iicliaol would liavc done, 
but not so the AlMvise. He knew His world too well, mid the race 
He meant to save. And so He spoke on earth that ((uict word, and 
wrote it indelibly with His blood, and ascended up on hi-ih, '-Lcadint,' 
captivity captive," though there was not a slave the les.s on earth. 
But the word of deliverance was spoken and printed by the Spirit 
upon the hearts of men, and it was sure of its fultillment. It was a new 
law among men. All old constitutions were founded not on eijuality, 
but on prerogative ; not on rights of man, but on rights of masters. 
We talk of the old republics. In Athens and Attica were 100,000 
freemen and 400, UOO slaves. South Carolina is a free state in com- 
parison. But, the word of freedom once spoken, He, who sceth the 
end from the beginning, was content to cherish His work in its long 
fulfillment. It was nearly 1500 years more before He deemed it time 
to conduct the ship of Columbus across the ocean, and to reveal 
the habitation which he had prepared for the first of earth's nations. 

I say the first ; for, in an important sense, we may say that there 
never was a real nation on earth until the declaration of American 
independence. Because, until then, the true fundamental principle 
of national life was nsver made the forming and creative principle of 
a people's life. 

•' By the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth 
standing out of the water and in the water." By ivords^ in an 
intelligent universe, is every thing made that ever was made. Words 
nerve and words corrupt the soul. '' The word of Caesar might have 
stood against the world," because in Ca3sar's word there was vigor 
enough to inspire an army, which could conquer the world. A few 
w^ords expressing potent ideas, like (Jod, country, duty, mercy, home, 
liberty, law, &c., make up a whole system of watchwords by which 
the entire order of human life is going forward to its future hopes. 

So the word, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,'' went sink- 
ing silently down into the minds of men for centuries. And, all the 
while, the whole world was organized upon the idea that men arc 
made to be masters and slaves, and to look up one to another, and 
not to look up every man frankly into the face of God, as He looketh 
down upon us with a human countenance in Christ, our prophet, 
priest and king. England has more liberty than any other old land ; 
and yet whatever is done in that government is done "in the gracious 
pleasure of her majesty," and the people are called subjects, not citi- 
zens. There still stands the form of the idol, of that image in which 
all royalties and all oligarchies have their place, as part of the political 
idolatiy, which must perish before a really genuine nation can be in 
any land. It is most true that in England, and in all the states 
Avhich have grown out of the old lioman I'^mpire, tlie princii)lc of 
human rights spoken by Christ has in a great degree disorganized 
the monarchical principle, so that although tlic form of the old master- 
ship continues, yet it is easy to sec that the iron is mingled with 
clay, — such clay as it has been standing upon and despising, and that 
the whole is ready to full and to crunible. 



g OUll NATION. 

Yet tlic Director of Events does not hasten its fall. For tlie world 
lias need of it yet. The nations that are to be when the world shall 
need kings no more, will forever owe a debt to Cyrus and to Alexan- 
der, to Cresar and to Alfred, to lion-hearted Richard and to Queen 
Elizabeth, and to Napoleon. A great blessing is a true king to a 
people that needs a king ; and every people does need a king which 
has not learned to look up, with an intelligent mind as well as with a 
reverent and obedient heart, to the " King Eternal." 

By that law of Christ, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," 
and by that question, "Who is my neighbor?" was the seed of 
our nation sown 1800 years ago. That seed was committed to the 
conscience of man. It passed into Europe, where liberty had been 
an old and mighty, though a somewhat unmeaning name, and it gave 
it power and significance. It melted away slavery, and is melting 
monarchy. It took deep root in the strong manhood of northern 
Europe, especially in the races whose enterprise brought them to the 
extreme point of European land and of European progress in Eng- 
land. I shall not pause to eulogize the Anglo-Saxons. God has 
made them great in these ages, for great purposes ; and they are 
sufficiently aware of their greatness. And when we remember the 
Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Span- 
iards, we may be reminded that it is wisdom for a leading race to be 
not high-minded, but to fear, and to do its work well in its day. But 
we may remember, thankfully, how well that seed of hope was cher- 
ished in the English nation, taking root in old Saxon times, buried 
under the Norman bondage as under the winter snow, springing up in 
Magna Charta, slowly developed until it came to maturity in the 
Puritans, when it was, by a most propitious severity, reaped and 
threshed, and cast across the seas, to become, upon a continent which 
had been waiting for it since time began, the right seed for the first 
of the nations. And here the nation was in being, and was maturing 
its strength and developing its principles for 150 years before 1776. 

Nor let us, if we claim to be more truly and fully a nation than any 
before, ever forget that it was only through the long labors of those 
old nations that our nation became possible. Especially, as we would 
" that our days may be long upon the land which the Lord our God 
giveth us," let us always honor with filial aftcction that land from 
■which our nation sprung, — our mother J<]ngland. God be thanked 
that we may call her mother. For is she not the glory of the king- 
doms, the choicest and most perfect fruit which the civilization of the 
C)M World, through its thousands of years of labor, has borne, or, upon 
that soil, could bear? There she stands, aloof from the Old World, 
and leaning toward the new. For a thousand years she has been 
gathering, and is gathering to-day with a broader sweep than ever, 
the moral riches of all old lands and times ; and for centuries she has 
l)een pouring them, and is pouring them to-day with more lavish 
liand than ever, into the lap of her daughter. Whatsoever is thought 
or said or done in i^higland worth llie hearing, is hoard by more 
Americans than Endishmcn. In the most distant seas, and in lands 



OUR NATIOX. 



<) 



tliut but ycsterdny were barbarous and oannil)al. our eoiuincrce is 
sheltered by bcr law, and our travelers and our missionaries arc 
protected by bcr consuls or aided by the generous benevolence of her 
sons. In a mutual intercourse, wliich reaches to every harbor and 
almost to every inland village, not only of the_ twolands, but of the 
■whole earth, it would be very strange if no difficulties arose between 
the two nations. It is very strange that they are so fcw.^ When 
iMiiiland was engaged in her terrible conflict with the first Na})ole(Mi, 
her'people could liardly be pleased to see the daughter-land finding 
an occasion to enter the ([uarrel against the mother; and when Ire- 
land threatened rebellion, we may remember that the son of the 
President of the United States Avas ostentatious in public demonstra- 
tions of sympathy. At a time when all the mind of this nation is 
absorbed in that earnest tension of soul which is crushing this rebel- 
lion, it is not strange that we should difler upon some great and 
urave points of public law and right, wliich might divide honest and 
deep read men. And we Americans are very ready to judge all such 
matters. There are very few of us who, if angels were to be judged, 
would have any scruple as to our own qualifications to sit upon the 
bench ; we would only raise the question whether we could get 
the appointment. Not that I find any fault with this universal and 
infinite self-reliance of our countrymen. I glory in it. It is the 
sanguine heart of youth, which feels itself e(iual to all things. And 
so \t is. There is more truth and victory in our wildest hopes than 
in our wariest fears. And because I see our nation ready to think, 
ready to speak, ready to act upon any matter and in anything, I know 
that there is a great future before us. 80 let us go on, assuming and 
exercising our prerogative to think and to judge, — each individual 
man of us with that own mind of his, which God gave him to be a 
man with,— upon every question, especially upon every great ques- 
tion, which our times present. Just so shall we become a great 
nation, by virtue of the individual greatness of millions of minds, all 
trained to act earnestly, intelligently and independently, iipon great 
questions and great thoughts."^ A nation so made of thinking and 
speaking uiind.s must have a voice like the sea; and as it thinks 
aloud, the alternatives which it presents to itself, its tides of feeling 
and of reason, necessarily roll an<l roar as they pass to and fro across 
its bosom. ]3ut the great swellings of the ocean arc not lawless any 
more than the agitations of a pool. The ocean bears the fleets of the 
w(jrld upon his bosom as safely as the little brook floats a child's toy- 
boat. And so the hopes of mankind may be as safe upon the Iree 
thought of a great people, as the interests of a kingdom with a hmisc 
of peers. Has there been, since there was a nation, a sublimer sight, 
than when, in the late great crisis of our relations with Kngland, 
there came in from all' quarters of our country to our rulers, tliat 
united voice, not tremulous with passion or with fear, ''Do that which 
is right V And greatly was it done. And that tide of feeling was 
nobly answered by the spirit which, at the same moment, was rising 
across the water against the wild cry of war that rang through I'Jig- 



10 OUR NATION. 

land at tlie supposed aggression of America upon Britain, the deep, 
earnest protest which came up to the government from every reli- 
gious body in the land, and from all the conscience of the people, 
" Let us have arhitration, and no tear of passion loith our hfclliren in 
their day cf trial." That was a voice not unworthy of our mother. 
Such a voice has never failed to come over the sea to us. And it is 
the true voice of the English soul. "We ought not to wonder that 
some Englishmen should bo jealous of our democratic institutions ; 
for we have felt and seen how our ow'n democracy inclines us to ill- 
will toward nujnarchies. Xor should wc think it strange that some 
Englishiuen should be jealous of our growth as a nation. Rather 
ought we to admire that generosity which, in other Englishmen, and 
in those who represent the England that is to be, rejoices in our in- 
crease. We must own that they have the advantage over us in 
magnanimity. The generosity with which they, in large loyalty to 
mankind and to truth, can rejoice in our increase, challenges us to 
unlearn that exclusive national pride, which appropriates our bless- 
ings as our own, and forgets that we have them in trust for mankind. 
But we will emulate them. Xor, again, is it strange that the same 
class of British merchantmen, who for tWenty-five years withstood 
the abolition of the slave-trade, should now feel the power of those 
new ropes of cotton, which have been found strong enough to bind 
our own Samson. 

Yet, behind jealousy and pride and selfishness, there is a live con- 
science in the British people, and that conscience has been and is 
with us, so far as we are true to ourselves. Conscience in man is 
always in the minority, for the simple reason that it is always in ad- 
vance. But it is always deathless and invincible and victorious. It 
leads the forlorn hope, and around it there gather none but the 
heroes. They who speak the true heart of England are the few men, 
but the great. So in the days of our struggle for independence, the 
great voice of Chatham was raised in our behalf, and he was sus- 
tained by those men in the House of Commons whose names have 
become historical. Chatham was in a poor minority in that House 
of Peers ; for they were the p6ers of (leorge the Third, king of 
l^j ngland, and he was the peer of George Washington, king of men. 
In the midnight of our revolution, Edmund Burke, in behalf of those 
who acted with him in ]*ai'lianicnt, wrote thus to the people of 
America : 

" Wc viev.' the establishment of the English colonics on princi- 
ples of liberty, as that which is to render this kingdom venerable to 
I'uture ages. In comparison of this, we regard all the victories and 
conquests of our wai'like ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, 
vulgar distinctions, in which many nations, whom wc look upon with 
little respect or value, have equaled, if not fir exceeded us. This is 
the peculiar and appropriated glory of England. Those tcho have and 
xoho hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or 
on your side of the ocean. We consider as the true, and the only true 
iMiiiliyhmen. Thixc who dep;irfc from it, whether there or here, arc 



OUR NATTOX. 11 

attainted, corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their original 
rank and yalue." 

That -was the spirit of the men who were fighting in the British 
Parliament a war not less severe than our fathers fought upon their 
own soil. And it is the spirit of the men, who, like Cubden aiul 
Briirht, represent the present masses, the future government, and the 
perpetual conscience of England. 

Chatham and Burke did not think tliat in being true to America 

thev were false to Englaiid. As we have seen, in the view of those 

'zre'at hearts, England was the name, not so much of certain square 

miles of soil, but of certain principles of national life ; and the man 

m who accepted those principles, wheresoever he lived, was their coun- 

■ tryman. Shall we accept tlicir lellow-citizenship, and their large 
idea of nationality, and take the hand they stretch across the seas, 
and say, " Yes I M'e are Englishmen, and you are Americans, — one 
nation by the tie of ' that foundation of common liberty/ which was 
English before it was ximerican ?" of which, indeed, as an English 
idea, America was born. The coming of the Pilgrims across the 
sea was only a part of that English movement for liberty which 
struggled with Cromwell and triumphed with William and Mary. I 
am accustomed to recur, with a kind of religious wonder, to that 
Charter which King James gave while the Pilgrims were upou the 
sea in the jMayflower. By that charter he gave the land between 
the 40th and the 48th degrees of latitude from the Atlantic to the 
South Sea, and he called it New England. Did he speak that of 
himself? or being, " &y the grace of Gud, king," did he prophcsij 
that that l>elt of "country was " determined," by the King of kings, 
for the habitation of a people who should take the principles of old 
English liljerty, and deveiop them in a free nation, whose greatness 
.and whose purity should deliver not that nation only, but old Eng- 
land also, and, in their time, all the nations of the earth ? 

Let us remember, then, that we have these principles of liberty, 
and this rising national greatness, not of ourselves, but that they are 
the Icijacy of all the nations that have struggled, and of all the mar- 
tyrs tiiat have died. They are part of the gifts which the dying Son 

^ of Man received for men. And they are ours, not for ourselves, but 

J for all mankind. 

* In our Declaration of Independence was Christ's golden rule first 

proclaimed to the world, as a law of national life. It was a beacon 
of hoi>e for all mankind, and all nations are flowing unto it. 

They come because they are attracted by its princii)les ; because 
that principle of its charter calls the allegiance of their hearts. Aijd 
.';o they come as coming home. Fur no nation until this has been in 
its principles and in its form a home for man, as such. Of course 
they come with many crude or visionary ideas as to what a land of 
liberty may be. But they come to be citizens of the land of ld.)erty, 
and will be apt scliolars in the conditions of liberty. Is it not right 
that they should come ? For do we not owe our liberty to their na- 
tions as well as to our Enulish fathers and to ourselves '.' And le not 



12 orn NATION. 

tliat syiiipatliy, wliicli bring-s tl'iein liove, tl'ic true nml suffieieiit cer- 
tificate of their birtli-right to Gitizensliip in the nation of the free 'f 
And if more title were needed, is it too much to say that our country 
owes its success in the present struggle to the true and prompt loyalty 
of citizens of foreign birth ^ They first rallied in force around the* 
standard of the Union in the border States, and to them, more than 
to the native population, must we look for loyalty in the rebel States, 

Thus, our country presents the spectacle of a nation forming aboat 
a principle — the principle of the equal rights of man. Whoever 
upon our soil is true to that principle, is a true American. Whoever 
upon our soil is not true to that principle, is not a true American. 
But still, Bo long as he docs no act of treason, the nation does not cast 
him out. It lets him live within its great heart, and cherishes li-im 
within its warmth and its wealth. Its great throbbings go forth for 
him, securely trusting that, if there be the seed of manhood in him, 
it shall yet make a man of him ; and if there be not, — if he be utterly 
an apostate, so that he cannot live under and in the Declaration of 
Independence, and feel it working, like the advancing sun of spring 
its steady and sure victory, it lets him find it out for himself, and 
lets him choose his time to secede and to grapple with the law of 
God and the conscience of mankind. 

" Eternal vigilance," says Jeff'erson, '• is the price of liberty." If 
eternal vigilance means eternal suspicion, we must think that tbiS 
maxim is a false and fatal one. Its great author Avould have been a 
greater and a better man if he had known how to co-operate in gene^ 
rous confidence with such men as Washington and Hamilton and 
Jay and the elder Adams. If man cannot have confidence in man, 
there can be no such thing as free government. Suspicion in the 
state, like jealousy in the house, is bondage. The rattlesnake, or the 
dripping sword, is not the emblem, nor is " Sic seinper tyrannis" the 
motto for a truly free commonwealth; but rather, '' Ense petit pla- 
cidam sub hhertate quielem," or the peaceful vine with the legend, 
" Qui transtiilit siistinet." Liberty is, in theory and in practice; 
inseparable from that charity, which '■ believeth all things, hopetli 
all things, endureth all things." And if it is not, and is not to be, 
safe in this world to believe and hope and endure thoroughly, theu 
the rule of charity is a rule of folly, and the '• perfect law of liberty'" 
is forever a vain hope. If we can have liberty at all, it must be 
upon the basis of mutual confidence, and mutual confidence rest^ 
upon truth and good will. An over-confidence may expose liberty to 
some attacks from abroad, and to some treason within, but a mutual 
suspicion is in itself death in the heart. 

So there was something great in that might, whicli has risen so 
terrible, yet so collected, to vindicate the law of our nation, when 
treason had risen in such form that it could no longer be mistaken. 
Yet, is there any greatness in it greater than the light which it 
makes to shine through that darkness, which had preceded it, when 
for those days and months, which were years and ages, the nation 
kept mi beuriiii.^ and i'urbcariu;;; '.' Knowing the deep truth of its 



OUR NATIOX. If, 

own heart, it could not and would not believe that tuns, who liad 
shared the tender love of such a mother, could be preparing a dagger 
for that mother's heart. Their forbearance was not so disloyal as it 
might seem, for in it lay not only the deep love which that mother 
had taught them, but also a sure confidence that the mother, having 
her home in hearts like theirs, was immortal and invulnerable. And 
when, at the stroke, they rose, the rising was as majestic as the wait- 
ing. It was, if I know the heart of this people, not in passion, but 
in truth. It is a great saying of one whose greatness has been 
])rought out by this struggle, and to wliom, as much as to any other 
living man, we owe its success, that " this is a tear of duty." 

Where else shall we find a people so mighty, and yet so self-com- 
manding, — so full of truth unconquerable, and yet so balanced by 
good will undyint; ? It seems like the shadow of that love of Heaven 
which bends, age after age, over this poor rebel Earth of ours, never 
giving over the hope that even such a world could yet be sa\'^d, — 
the love of Ilim, who would not strike for vengeance until He had 
died to save. 

And is the comparison a profane one ? For is not our nation a 
part of the unfolding of that great plan of salvation---of the re-organi- 
zation of mankind under His own royal law, — the law of liberty '{ 

Just in that power to command self, as well as to conquer enemies, 
lies the assurance of the ability of our people to be a free people. 
The issue turns almost simply on our ability to be true to the princi- 
ples of our national life. The doctrine that men are made to be free 
and equal, created our nation, and has made us great. Such a doc- 
trine has a double application. There is in it a duty as well as a 
privilege. It was not so much for us to maintain our own rights 
under it in our first Revolution, when we were small, as it is for us to 
maintain our truth in it, now that we are grown great. We have 
been put to the test in the case of negro slavery, and because the 
heart of this people would not approve of such a system, but fixed its 
frown, more mighty than any law, upon it continually, and more and 
more, this present war is upon us. It will be, in its immediate or 
ultimate results, our deliverance I'rom that danger of falling liom the 
principle of our life. And we may trust that, in the questions which 
are to arise out of the war, the just and generous truth of the nation 
will find its safe and glorious way, remembering those noble parting- 
words of the father ot our country : " It will be worthy of a free, 
enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to 
mankind the magnanimous but too novel example of a people alway.s 
guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. " 

In point of material greatness, I think we have not fallen behind 
the anticipations of Washington. You will not find upon the earth's 
surface another land so fit for the rich and ample home of a great 
nation as ours, nor another population so full of the elements of 
national greatness as this which is filling this great land, nor another 
principle which can make a true living nation except that which live* 



54 Ul-li NATfitX. 

in us. If we can hold our faith In God. and our i'lthlt in man. smi 
uur own truth of heart, we are safe. 

The principle of our nation does not allow us to have subjects, so 
that an Empire, like that of l^riiain, we cannot have. Yet, in our 
own way, we have empire, too. " Britain rule.'? the seas," they used 
to say ; and yet, do you know that the commercial marine of these 
United States is to-day greater than that of Britain lierself, w^hilc 
the fleets of all other nations together would not equal half the ton- 
nage of cither branch of the great Anglo-Saxon power. ]Jut this is 
not our Empire. Britain holds millions of barbarians uuiler the fear 
of her power. America holds millions of enlightened men, in every 
civilized country, bound to her by a true and deep allegiance to the 
principle of American liberty. Lafiyette, and Steuben, and Kosci- 
usko, and Chatham, were not solitary specimens of their kind ; nor is 
the race extinct. Go to Washington, and you shall find among the 
chief ornaments of our nation the legacy of James Smithson, a stran- 
o-er. Another, who, like Smithson, never set foot upon our soil, but 
whose love for our nation led him to devote his life to our history, 
said : " As Hannibal was taught by his father to hate the Romans, 
so was I trained by mine to love the Americans.'' So are many 
fathers in the Old World training their sons. Where was ever seen 
before such a spectacle of empire, — that one nation, not by any power 
of arms, not by any craft of policy, but by the magnetism of simple 
truth, should draw to itself the attachment of whatsoever is wise and 
true throughout the world ! Nor is this true of individuals only. 
Whole peoples love America wHh an alfection which their own gov- 
ernments do not conciliate. Ho Germany, and Ireland, and Italy, 
and Poland, have been, and are ©urs. And other peoples cherish our 
name beside our own. So in England, it was confessed that the joy 
with which some men viewed our civil strife, was because they were 
jealous of the admiration of Englishmen for America. Yet we ought 
"not to think, as we are apt to do. that all kings and nobles hate us. 
For a king is a man — and may be a true man ; and the generous 
kindness for us which inspired the last public act of Prince Albert of 
England, and the hearty sympathy of the Russian Czar for us as a 
people, struggling like himself for the emancipation of slaves, ought 
to satisfy us that the same human heart beats in the monarch as in 
the subject or citizen, and that if we be true to man, mankind will be 
true to us. If the ordeal through which we are passing shall deliver 
us from that system which has been our reproach, without leaving u? 
filled with internal heart-burnings and hate, so that wc shall stand as 
a truly free and felf-governing people, will not the acceptance of 
American principles, tlu^ true empire of America, be as broad and 
onduring as the name of Washington — as broad as the mind, and 
lasting as the memory of man ? 

Our nation, then, is not of ourselves or to ourselves. It is an 
attempt of mankind to realize a vision of liberty which has been float- 
iW'T in the mind of man since iho fall. The attempt is in its charac- 



OUR NATIOX. 15 

Icr vlsiuiiury; and tlie v,-orkl has lonp; ago learned that it is fouH.sh to 
be chasing visions. And yet mankind never would give it up. They 
have always insisted upon hoping that the vision would yet come 
true, and though it tarries long, thoy wait for it. They v.'ill cha.«c 
the rainbow. They will believe that liberty and lavr shall yet be one 
upon the earth. Even to the very last day.n liie young men M'ill 
continue to see that vision, and the old men vrill dream that dream. 
And dreams are true. They work tlicir ovrn fulfillment. This vision 
of liberty has been building its fabrics from age to age, and as they 
have seemed to fall, they have ri-sen again. America itself is such a 
fabric; and if it should pass away, and man wake to disappointment 
again, his mind will renew the same dream, until it shall be true. 
Eut it hopes that this time it will not be mocked. Believing in the 
word of God, believing in the hope of glorious liberty, written bv 
Grod in the mind of man, — that hope which has sustained a groaning 
creation iii all its long bondage, — it cannot give up the looking for a 
free state. And if such a hope is ever to be fulfilled, when and 
where and how should it ever be, if not here, and in the development 
of tliis republic ? Is there another continent to be discovered '{ Is 
therc another stock from which to constitute the nation of the free, 
if they who have been called from all the wisest and best nations of 
men shall fail ? Is there another principle more pure and true than 
that of the equal rights of men under the law of God ? All these 
seem to be grounds of hope, not only such as never were before, but 
such as never can be again. Accordingly, we have often heard the 
remark that this is the last hope of liberty upon earth. It is a saying 
of good omen. If it be so — if this is the last hope of liberty — then 
it is a sure hope. For the hopes of man and the promi.scs of God 
are not going to fail of their fulfillment. 

They must not die I they cannot die I Mankind shall not have it 
to say, that it reposed its hopes in our nation and was disappointed. 
But how shall we succeed ? what are the dangers ? Trom abroad, 
we may say — none ; the sympathy and the support of the world arc 
with us, if wc are true to it; and we have already strength enou"-h 
to maintain our own right in the world. And what are our dangers 
from within ? "We are in the habit of providing defcn.ecs and safe- 
guards and anchors, as if all we had to do was to save as much as wc 
might of what we already have. The fact is, that we are trying to 
realize a vision ; and we must be visionaries, and must build up. and 
build with the only true living and lasting material, and that is, with 
'• such stuiF as dreams are made of." I'or it is a cloud-land, '• the 
kingdom of heaven," which we arc building up ; and we cannot 
build that Avith the materials f)r by the rules of this world. Tlie 
Jerusalem which is free, and the mother of us all, is not founded on 
or built of this world's granite. It is from above, and mu.st be built 
of living stones. We need positive elements. And first among 
them we may name Hope. 

As our nation is the child of flu' linpcs of luankind. so it is onlv 
by being full of those hupcs in their mo«f ;izii:v liuc^ ibaf v,-.- ciin 



16 OUR NATION. 

lead oil to their fulfillment. Do not be afraid to hope. No rawe-tlnt 
that man ever saw yet in the western sky, and no Aurora in tho 
north, has been equal to the loving brightness with which the whole 
arch of heaven is yet to smile upon a cleansed earth. And in no 
small degree shall our nation and our world be saved by that very 
hope. 

And another clement of success v»'ill be Fai'Ji. 

Faith in (ilod, by whose own plan and power all these things arc 
going forward in which we are permitted to be instruments, and 
whose heart is in them. Faith in man, who is showing xis so abund- 
antly that his heart is with us, so far and so long as we are true to 
the cause of man. It seems a hazardous reliance; and yet, as wo 
have seen, hero all the question turns. If man cannot trust in man, 
there cannot bo free government, there cannot be society, — we would 
not care to have life. And it is a safe trust. Individual men may 
be dishonest. Very few men are like Washington ; and yet, in this 
nation, or in any other nation, or in mankind as a whole, the great 
public heart is an honest heart, and it will exact honesty of its agents. 
Dishonesty is the child of suspicion. Confide in man, and. as a rule, 
man is yours. " This is the victory which ovcrcometh the world, 
even our faith." 

AVe must have faith in man, nnd faith in man's destiny. That 
faith, clear and unwavering, is the only condition of success. To 
doubt, to look back, is to fail. So the poetry of man (which is his 
second sight, looking into real truth,) has always been conscious. 
You know the fable of Orpheus, the old minstrel, who went to the 
dusky realm of death to recover his loved and lost Eurydice. ITis 
soni;- charmed dark Pluto and Proserpina, and they granted that she 
should follow him to the light of day, provided that the minstrel 
should not look back. But the poet lost his faitli. He looked, and 
saw the form that he loved flee back despairing into the darkness. 
Can you read the fable ? Eurydice is Eureia dike — that icide jus- 
tice, which is loved and lost to man, and Orpheus is man, the orphan, 
bereft of that truth, which was the blessedness of his life. ]3ut he 
has left to him the poetry of his nature, which can still lament the 
loss, and which still has power to restore the lost, provided that poetry 
can so ravish our souls that wc shall go right on, singing that song 
of truth, which is in unison with the song of the just, looking from 
the darkness and toward the light, until we come fully into the light; 
and then, when we come to be children of the light, the form we 
love will be by our side, the companion of our truth and of our bliss 
forever. But while we are yet in the darkness it cannot be ours. 
If Ave turn back the vision fades; we arc still unjust citizens of an 
unjust world. 

Again, we must have Charili/ ; a generous heart toward every 
nation and toward every man. Our strength as a nation does not 
lie in tho tenacity with which we can cling to every foot of soil, or 
to our own interpretation of every accidental point of controversy ; 
but it lios iu the contidcncc of mankind in oiir fidelity to man. If 



OIR NATION. 17 

we will stoj) to think of it, we sliall seo that our foreign power i.s 
totiilly different from that of any other people. It is a moral power. 
All other. goverments have appealed to patrioti-un ; that is, an attach- 
ment to their own soil, and an alienation from every other ; tliat is 
•• thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy." AVe rest upon 
the broad basis of humanity. We love our country, not only as our 
own, Ijut as the sanctuary of the rights and hopes of man ; and as 
such a .sanctuary, all mankind will love it, if we will let them. One 
clear lesson of this winter's collision with England was this, that the 
English people could not be excited to war with us, except by the. 
impression that we wished war with them. When they saw that wo 
desired peace and truth they grasped the olive brach with joy. We 
do not need, and cannot afford, like the old governments of force, to 
depend upon the character of the bully. We are great enough to 
luive the right to set to the world the novel example of a nation 
which, in its public relations, can practice the principles of Christi- 
anity and humanity. The hearty good will of the masses of tho 
English people is worth more to us — and through us to man — than a 
victorious war with the British monarchy. Lot all the world see that 
■we honor and love man as num, and that we desire the good of every 
nation as a nation ; that we have not, as surely we need not have, any 
jealousy of any, — and then, if there were upon the earth a govern- 
ment inclined to war with u.s, tliere would be not a people that would 
suffer its government to lead them into such a war. For a free na- 
tion the best policy for security at home is a policy of peace. For 
war itself is despotism. I know that a great bard has written : 

'* Oh Freedom ! thoii art not, as poots dream, 
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, 
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap 
AVith which the Roman master crowned his .slave 
When he took olf the gyves. A bearded man, 
Arm'd to the teeth, art thou." 

" A bearded man," indeed I And was it for love of a bearded 
man that man has been struggling and sighing ever since his fall ? 
No I the dream of poets is the dream of man. It is of '' the moun- 
tain nymph, sweet Liberty," whose virtue, stern enough to repel all 
violence, is only the dignity of a loveliness attractive enough to win 
and rule and bless all liumanity. 

" Peace on earth, good will toward man," angels sang, when the De- 
liverer was born J and "Peace on earth, good will to man," must be 
the motto of the nation that is to lead the world's deliverance. 

How to be true to our principles at home, is now, as it always has 
been and always will be, the great and difficult problem. How to do 
justice to that race which is lifting to us that appeal, '"Am 1 not a 
man and a brother y in all the associations in which (Jod has jilaccd 
us to work out this experiment of a free government, is a (|uesti(>n 
^\•hil:h has en<ra<rorl the earnest s'udv of fh(^ wisest, anil the earnest 



18 OIK NATION. 

prayer of the best, since we were a nation. There are very many 
men, and very many women, who see through it all, and are consum- 
ed with impatience because our statesmen do not sec through it too, 
and cut the Gordian knot v/ith the sword. But we must be content 
to wait. The cause in which is the heart alike of God and of man, 
is a safe cause ; and if God can wait as well as work, so may wc. In 
the meantime, it is a great thing for us to knovr, and for the world to 
see, that this great nation is laboring through this great war, simply 
because there was in it an honest heart, which would not be false to 
the cause of man. We must labor through to the deliverance in the 
Vi'ay that God leads us. Let us bear the burden with all considera- 
tion for the slow judgments, the fears, the errors, even the faults of 
one another. Meanwhile, let the world reproach us as well as praise 
us. It may not be best that they should exercise for us that forbear- 
anc3 which we ought to feel for one another. Let them show us our 
faults. Let them strike us wheresoever we are tender. It is fair 
that they should require that the nation which is to lead them all 
should be a perfect nation. It is a noble compliment which they 
pay us v.hen they look to us for perfection. And if in any respect 
they fail of doing all that they can to make it pei-fect, I fear it is, 
that the natural tavor of man for the cause of man, leads them to deal 
too kindly with us. AVeare grown to manhood ; we do not need their 
flattery. But let them be true to search out our faults, and let us be 
true to correct them, and then they cannot but follow us j and as 
the natio is shall come to see in us what a nation is, they will become 
like us, aii'l wiU unite Avith us, in such form as the wisdom of the 
coming day shall be able to devise. And then the sun in all his cir- 
cuit shall look down upon the United States of Humanity. 

Then the world will begin to move. It seems a poor aifair that wc 
have been working these 0,000 years for mere liberty, and have not 
even secured that as yet. And what, after all, is liberty ? It is 
only getting the fetters oft", so that we can begin to live and to work. 
When all the world is Iree, every man's powers in condition and 
awake, we may expect mankind to make progress. Then we shall 
begin to see what government is. The word government means 
pilotage. Hitherto we have had rather onc/iGrage ; but Avhen every 
ship of state is in trim, and every seaman in his place with hearty 
good will, there will be a fleet ready to sail on to realize the blessed 
destinies of humanity. What wealth, what greatness, what wisdom, 
will the united and developed intellectual and physical resources of 
mankind be able to discover and secure in the ages that are to come I 
God ««;rant that as that fleet shall sail, the flag-ship may ever bear 
the glorious Stars and Stripes I 



